Who Wants A Low-Mileage Subaru Impreza P1?

You all know about the Subaru Impreza, right? And many of you probably know about the best darn Impreza to ever come out of Japan. That’s right, it’s *insert name of special edition model here*. Yes, arguments come thick and fast about why a 22B is better than an RB5 or a WRX STI Spec C Competition, or actually, why the STI Cosworth CS400 is the best of the lot, or, or, or.

Whatever: for the sake of this article, the best Impreza ever was the P1, and actually it didn’t come out of Japan. It came out of Warwickshire. And now you can buy one with naff-all miles on it.

Some background history, first of all. Back in the late ‘90s, it was actually pretty difficult to buy a high-performance Impreza in the UK, because there was limited supply, demand in Japan was high, and so Subaru UK didn’t sell them. If you wanted a fancy rally-style monster, you had to go to an importer and buy a grey-market car, fresh off the boat from Japan.

Many people did indeed want such cars, to the point where Subaru UK got a bit narked that they weren’t making any money from the Impreza’s popularity. So they got together with their WRC partner, Prodrive, to concoct a plan.

Said plan was to create an official UK-spec monster Impreza that would finally give Subaru UK a slice of the pie. The Prodrive engineers took the two-door bodyshell and determined to make the finest road-going Impreza possible. They got Peter Stevens – he of the McLaren F1 – to refine the aerodynamics. The tyres, far from being fat with grip, were just 205mm wide to allow for slip, and therefore fun. It ran low on STI dampers with Eibach springs, but it ran soft to cope with British roads. Power delivery may only have been 280bhp, but it felt monstrous for the time, with a 8200rpm redline and a 0-60 time of 4.7 seconds.

Tempted? Only 1000 P1s were made, and as a 23-year-old car (and counting), far fewer than that are A) standard B) registered and C) in one piece. SO we challenge you to find a better example than this one, up for sale from Iconic Auctioneers in February. With just 22,768 miles on the clock from new, this one is in top nick and even has a few extras over the standard car, including 18-inch Prodrive wheels over the standard 17s, and the Big Front Brake kit – important, as the only real criticism of the original car was that the brakes weren’t quite hardcore enough.

If you’re tempted, the guide price is between £45,000 and £55,000. Considering a 22B sold for nearly £500,000 earlier this year, that seems like an absolute steal.